Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 2420292" data-attributes="member: 12332">Well, using the rules in Wulf's expanded Grim Tales CR system, you CAN do character CR so ECL = CR.Not, as somebody said, that some of the ECL races wouldn't be worth it for RP or character reasons, in the right amounts.  This particular campaign features a large resurgance of Drow social domination, with an evil empire (NOT run by the Drow) and a large part of humanity enslaved.  Of course the concept for the campaign was the party would be Good freedom-fighters opposing and eventually toppling the empire in an epic and plane-spanning tale ... but when the GM offered up Drow for the obvious "I'm The Only Good Drow" Dribble Do'Udon concepts I decided instead to go total Lawful Evil with enough backstory to account for his joining the human-underground-resistance.  It's been a blast, really, but he allowed me to take the "racial levels" method from Wizard's bit on Savage Progressions, so that when we started at 4th level I wasn't playing a 2nd level PC.  Honestly, -I- would have never taken the racial levels, but I feel sort of bound to do so, and recently skipped 6th level with everybody else to pay off a racial level.  7th is fast on its heels and I'm trying to decide if it's worth even MORE loss of spellcasting power (wanted to stay traditional, Male Drow Wizard).  It's NOT, but sitting in limbo with 5+Level SR certainly isn't worth a level.By Upper_Krust's system, for a PC, the stat bonuses and ESPECIALLY the Spell Resistance are about worth the +2 LA you get stuck with as Drow.  But SR is a sticky thing.  It only crops up when you're targeted with magic, and the smart money's on not targeting obvious Drow with magic.  AND it's a hot-moment ability that's often likely to be forgotten.  Another player went Drow and got nuked by a Fireball and it wasn't until after the game that I thought about it and realized nobody remembered to roll his SR.  So, really, since that's the only spell he's been targeted with all campaign, and if its the only spell he's targeted by until that character dies or is retired, he's largely wasted two levels.  That just sort of spooked me.  If there were a race out there that was +1 LA for purely, say, stat-bonuses, THAT might be worth it because you're not liable to forget you have +4 STR in the middle of a tense combat.  So I got to looking at some of the "big and tough" type monstrous races, and realized that they all had about 2-4 Racial Hit Dice and LAs of +1-+2.  Bugbear, for instance, is ECL 4 ... and for that you're really paying for only about +2.3 PC CR.  Horribly over-priced.This has just been of interest to me recently because several GMs have felt a little kitchy and recently opened up the floor to all of the "Playable As PCs" type monstrous races ... and have been dissappointed at the mysterious lack of response from the player base.  I went for it for purely role-playing reasons, but to be honest, I had to plot out the price-to-value and make sure Drow was at least somewhat worth the price tag.--fje</blockquote>

Verification